Revealing caprine schistosomiasis and its One Health importance in Malawi: A molecular epidemiological investigation augmented with a praziquantel treatment and GPS animal tracking pilot sub-study.

To shed first light on caprine schistosomiasis and its zoonotic potential in Malawi, we conducted a molecular epidemiological investigation, sampling goats ( = 230) across three districts, using faecal miracidia hatching test. Molecular genotyping of miracidia later revealed the prevalence of to be 0.0 % in Nsanje District ( = 30), 16.

Small dams drive Anopheles abundance during the dry season in a high malaria burden area of Malawi.

This study explores the influence of small dams on the exposure to malaria vectors during the dry season in Kasungu district, Malawi, an area recently identified as high priority for malaria interventions by the National Malaria Control Programme. Small dam impoundments provide communities with a continuous supply of water for domestic and agricultural activities across sub-Saharan Africa and are considered vital to food security and climate change resilience. However, these permanent water bodies also create ideal breeding sites for mosquitoes in typically arid landscapes.

A first report of Pseudosuccinea columella (Say, 1817), an alien intermediate host for liver fluke, in Malawi.

Starting in October 2021, quarterly malacological surveys have been undertaken in Malawi, with the sampling of 12 specified freshwater habitats throughout a calendar year. Each survey monitors the presence of aquatic intermediate snail hosts of medical and veterinary importance. In March 2023, the alien lymnaeid species Pseudosuccinea columella was encountered for the first time in the surveys, in Nsanje District.

An alien intermediate snail host in Malawi - (Quoy and Gaimard, 1832) - A new concern for schistosomiasis transmission in Africa?

The freshwater amphibious snail commonly occurs in eastern Asia, on certain Pacific islands and more importantly has recently dispersed into Europe. Since this snail is now considered an invasive species, its distribution is of growing parasitological interest as an alien intermediate host for various trematodes, particularly liver flukes. As part of ongoing surveillance for snail-borne diseases in Malawi, a population of was first observed in May 2023, alongside an alarming presence of a human schistosome cercaria.

Monitoring and simulating landscape changes: how do long-term changes in land use and long-term average climate affect regional biophysical conditions in southern Malawi?

We set out to reveal the effects of long-term changes in land use and long-term average climate on the regional biophysical environment in southern Malawi. Object-oriented supervised image classification was performed on Landsat 5 and 8 satellite images from 1990 to 2020 to identify and quantify past and present land use-land cover changes using a support vector machine classifier. Subsequently, using 2000 and 2010 land use-land cover in an artificial neural network, land use-land cover for 2020 driven by elevation, slope, precipitation and temperature, population density, poverty, distance to major roads, and distance to villages data was simulated.